Exponentially
by EleanorRigbee
Summary: She wishes they could go back to before, to just being friends who didn’t know what the other looked like naked...Post Shelter Island, Robin and Barney


**Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't sue.**

**A/N:** I wanted to see if I could write a story about Robin's feelings developing since Barney started S4 with his feelings intact. **Robin's PoV, Post Shelter Island. All speculation**.

-

It is decided unanimously that they aren't going to talk about Shelter Island. After Ted gets drunk and starts growing a beard and drunk dials Robin and throws up in her doorway—which he cleans up this time before Robin even wakes up, thank God, one of the perks of moving in together—they just stopped talking about It.

All of them.

(Robin tries to apologize once for giving him the cold shoulder in the days after the failed wedding after the drunk voicemail from Ted that ended with a weary Barney saying, "Sorry about that, just—", before the machine cut him off, but Barney won't let her. "Scherbatsky, please." He'd grins but he's fiddling with his scotch and clearing his throat, so Robin drops it. She wishes they could go back to before, to just being friends who didn't know what the other looked like naked.)

-

The first few weeks, after they all decide to stop talking about _It_, when Ted's beard is still in its first-thirty-minutes-of-Castaway stage, Barney takes to sitting with her in MacLaren's with the wanted pages. They have three different city papers spread between them and a box of multicolored highlighters and sharpies and ballpoint pens because Barney claims there's an ink system that's vital to any job search. Robin just sticks to her green highlighter and complains about how his colorful pages make her head swim ("I could literally go into epileptic shock and I don't even have epilepsy.").

"How about this one." Barney says and Robin pulls his page over to her, scans cautiously because even though they've been doing this a few nights Barney still thinks its hilarious to circle help wanted ads for strip clubs and message parlors. This time it's a request for a hotel bar nighttime singer, just for the holiday season, and Barney's smile suggests he believes there's a chance she'll consider this.

"Well, it's a step up from pole dancing."

"That's the spirit Scherbatsky."

Back in her room she rips out the ad. Not that she's going to call, but still, it's the thought that counts, even when she's not sure what the thought is.

-

Barney asks her if she wants to play laser tag and Robin's sure if she'd been walking she would have stopped in her tracks from surprise. Because it's not like anything changed after they Did It—Oh for the love of God, what was she? A thirteen year old boy?—except for the whole rift in the group over Ted being stupid and them not being weird to the point where it was a little weird and the time Barney was scarily polite. It's not like they haven't been hanging out just as much, because they still do MacLaren's almost nightly now that she's back and they have the occasional Wii death match and stuff, but they sort of just do that stuff because it happens. Barney hasn't invited her out since he was trying to break in a rebound bro and even that was more blackmail and groveling than 'hey wanna hang out?'.

"You game Scherbatsky?" He thrusts his chin out her, serious as always about laser tag, and Robin's surprised by how much she missed this, them just bro-ing around.

"To save the world from chubby tweens, Stinson? Always." They fist bump over the tabletop and Robin's grinning so hard her face hurts. Barney doesn't seem to be doing any better.

-

Okay, maybe they slip up sometimes. And by they, she means her. But it only happens that one time when Barney loses her sister on the subway and calls her only after the fact rather than when it actually happens (and why had Robin let Katie talk her into letting her go to MOMA with Barney?) and Robin gets so mad she can't even see straight let alone think straight by the time Katie's back at the apartment safe and in one piece.

Barney opens his mouth to grin and shrug his way of it but Robin cuts him off by sending Katie into the kitchen. "What the hell Barney? I know I was deranged for letting her go out with you to begin with, knew you'd probably just use her as some pawn in an elaborate story to catch the next bimbo in your net but how does any capable adult lose a teenager on a subway?"

He drops the smile and actually looks earnest but it just pisses her off more and before she knows it they're going back and forth, back and forth and they're both getting angry now and Barney's turning pink and Robin's face is hot and he says, "You act like I run around letting you down all the time. It's not like I wanted any of it to happen."

"That's just it Barney, you never mean for it to happen but it does. And maybe you don't do it all the time, but your timing sucks because when it does happen is usually when I really need you to—"

"What? When besides now have I ever—?"

"I needed you to be there on that stupid island but you were too wrapped up in the tramp on your bed. What the hell happened to bros before hos? Isn't that in your stupid code? I —" And she didn't even know how angry she still felt about that, about not being to hide and lick her wounds in his room. And yeah, there's a big part of her that's thankful she didn't go in because being morally dejected played a pretty big role in why they slept together the last time—the only time—but there's the part of her that still feels petty and rejected too.

Barney's mouth clamps shut and he looks at her so hard she's afraid she'll actually feel it pressing down on her. He doesn't say anything else and leaves. The door doesn't slam behind him and she's not sure what to do in the quiet he leaves behind.

-

"Everything between you a Barney alright?" Ted asks the next night when he comes back from the bar. Katie flew back home that morning and Robin hasn't moved off the couch since she got back from the airport. She's lost track of how many laps she's done searching for something to watch.

"Peachy, why you ask?"

"Both of you bowed out of MacLaren's tonight."

Robin turns off the TV. "I'm just tired." She doesn't give Ted the chance to ask more questions and goes to her room.

-

"Look, I'm sorry about the subway thing, and I'm sorry about the other thing and I'm just sorry alright. "Robin you're my bro, and the Barncle does not apologize unless there is a serious turbulence in his broship." He's staring at her from across the tabletop, biting his lip and pulling on his cufflinks and just asking her to say something. Robin looks down at her scotch and she's relieved he said it first because she was seconds away from asking him to put the whole stupid thing behind them—because really, she should have asked what happened before she jumped down his throat. Besides, its not like she's still bugging over what happened on Shelter Island. Seriously. Hindsight has shown the whole situation to be one of her less shining moments.

"Stinson, please." She says, fiddling with her glass, and he lets out a breath, sinks back into the booth. She tries to laugh.

-

It happens like this: she gets a job at a little independent news show that runs on weekends on PBS and it's a lot of leg work but the stories are legit and she's so happy when she gets the call she just hugs the first person she sees. And it's not like she was looking for him, its just he was coming out of the men's room and she just throws herself on him and starts rambling about how she's got a job and how she didn't murder her chances of telling real news when she left Japan and she's not going to have to work with a chimp—she asked—and isn't it great?

Barney hugs her back and tells her its awesome and they hug and it's not weird at all. Not when he tells her he's happy or when he says he's proud or when they don't stop hugging. Not when they do stop and he smiles, a real smile like when he married Lily and Marshal or saw Sandcastles for the first, and sixth, time.

She smiles back and then he moves his hand and kind of pets her hair and pushes it behind her ear and his thumb brushes against her ear shell and it's the least sexual thing anyone's ever done to her ever and Robin really wants to kiss him and the thought doesn't immediately send her running for the hills.

And it's the not weirdness that freaks her out, that makes her take a step back and clear her throat. "I'm gonna, uh, tell the other guys."

-

So it turns out that it's not the memory of Barney naked that's haunting Robin half the time these days. It's not the noises he made or the things he said or the memory of how it all felt.

Nope, what Robin's caught up on is the feeling of his tie clutched in her hand, the smoothness of the material and how easily he followed it when she tugged it forward.

It's practically a relief, those days he doesn't wear a tie.

-

Robin figures this is all going to blow up spectacularly in her face, just like the Ted thing, except this time there's no one to tell because this is Barney she's crushing on. Marshal would probably try to talk her into seeking help and Lily would want to know if it's the sex that makes it seem like a good idea and Ted…Ted probably wouldn't take it too well.

At least the last time Barney figured it out on his own, so Robin has that to look forward to if nothing else.

Not that the prospect of Barney Stinson figuring her out is the outcome Robin's rooting for here. Mostly she sways between deep denial and the delusional kind of hope that if she never tells anyone it'll go away on its own.

_Oh, yeah_, Robin thinks, _this is going to blow up good_.

-

She's pretty sure things are escalating to a bad place when Barney's birthday comes around and she knows actually what to give him. It takes four hours on the phone with her mother—it should have taken ten minutes but Robin's mom doesn't let her get a word in for almost three hours after the initial 'hey mom, how you doing?' and then there's the extra forty-three minutes after Robin finally gets around to asking, during which her mother gives her opinion thoroughly.

She has it delivered to his apartment—just because this thing is getting out of hand doesn't mean she has to enable _herself_—and doesn't say anything about it to anyone.

He lets himself into the apartment later that night with the biggest grin on his face—this is dork Barney at his finest. She half expects a magic trick involving fire next—and asks for a high five in place of the standard greeting. "Robot Five!" he says and she complies, then watches him power down, sound effects included, before he springs back up. "Awesome play Scherbatsky."

"You like it then?" She doesn't mean to sound like some insecure eighteen year old asking a boy whether he likes the mix tape she made him, but she totally does. God, she's even tugging at the bottom of her shirt.

Barney's looking at her funny. He's still happy but his head's tilting sideways and its like he's trying to figure something out. It kind of looks like he's trying to do long division or something and Robin's heart starts beating so hard she's pretty sure it's starting to sound like the freaking Telltale heart in here. Barney's eyes kind of squint before he looks down. When he looks up again he's just smiling, but its softer somehow, quieter, and Robin doesn't know what to do.

"Yeah, Scherbatsky, I love it."

-

She's wiping sweat out of her eyes after the last round of laser tag—oh man was it epic, those Swedish kids had them pinned—and taking a sip from the Giant Gulp they always share when she notices it.

"Quit hogging the soda, Scherbatsky." She didn't know she'd stopped drinking but hadn't passed the cup back until he poked her in the side. Robin looks at him and counts days backward in her head and counting tonight, it's been almost a week of hanging out with him.

"Barney when are you getting laid?" Robin winces at her own question, wishes she get the damn disconnect between her brain and the rest of her fixed already because this whole feelings for Barney Stinson thing is starting get in the way of her functioning.

Barney actually chokes on his pretzel and Robin has to thump him on the back to get him breathing normally again and by then she thinks the whole thing might just be forgotten. "What the hell kind of question is that, Scherbatsky? This is a family establishment." His voice breaks on the word establishment.

"We've been hanging out all week. Korean karaoke Tuesday, then paintball Thursday night and the bar and then we went to that Chinese place that used to be Lily's apartment and watched the game. Now we're here. What, it's been a slow week?" Robin cringes at the idea he's been benched due to some treatment. How long does the Clap last for again?

"Naw, just—" he's looking down at his pretzel, "bros before hos right?" And Robin's going to point out that saying only applies to situation where the two are in conflict but its not like Robin—

Oh.

He's picking her anyway. Oh. Robin can't remember how her tongue's supposed to work.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

"Right."

-

He shows up at the apartment just when she's heading down to meet everyone else. He looks frazzled, suit a little rumpled, the true sign of distress.

"Robin, you. I—" He steps towards her gestures back and forth and she never thought she'd see Barney at a lost for words and flustered.

"I lov—" he starts and suddenly she gets the rush of '_This is it'_. So she cuts him off. She presses her mouth against his so tightly the words have no choice but to stay in. Because maybe if no one says it won't be true. If it's not true no one's going to get hurt when this all blows up in their faces.

Instead she lets her hand wrap around his tie and tugs him in close, until she can feel his belt pressing into her belly and his hands are in her hair and on her face. She feels his thumb pressing against her jaw.

He pulls away from her, moves one hand to her hip to keep her close. He stares expectantly at her and she knows what he wants to hear. But she can't. Because then it will be true. Then someone will get hurt (and she doesn't want it to be her, but she doesn't want it to be him either and there's no going back after this. No pretending that pretending will make everything normal again).

"Me too." She says with a nod, "I l—oh, just, me too okay?" and he seems to think it over for a second before he's leaning back in and giving it everything.

And it's terrifying, because she knows him, knows that the last time anything like this happened to him he completely remade himself just to get away from the disaster sight. She doesn't want to be responsible for breaking this Barney. She likes this Barney. (She loves this Barney, but that's between her and herself, and maybe one day she'll let him in on it too, but she's getting ahead of herself.)

-

"So," Barney says later, when they're lying in her bed. He's looking up her, blinking back sleep, and Robin thinks he's kind of adorable. "Just to make sure we're on the same page: This happened right?"

Robin cards her fingers through his hair and lets herself relax. Bad ending or no, they won't get to it until they start.

"Yeah, Barney, this happened."

-

The End


End file.
